Tag Archive: Activism

Recycling Plastic Markers

My daughter, Hannah, is almost 5 years old and she loves to draw. She’ll use whatever’s on hand but her favourite drawing tool, by far, is a marker. I can see why – they have the most vivid colours and they don’t become dull with use. As long as you remember to put the tops back on they hold their own for quite some time.

I have concerns with markers, though. For one thing, markers are all made of plastic. This means that when we’re done with them they head to the landfill where they’ll spend tens of thousands of years.

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Around The Greenosphere: Weekly Link Roundup

Here are some favorite posts from elsewhere that had us thinking this week, to help start your weekend a bit greener.

Monday Doreen at Mom Goes Green posted on ridding our respective mailboxes of copious amounts of junk mail, and her post features multiple organizations who will help you do that easily and affordably.

Tuesday EcoGeek published an article on a new and unusual use for cocunut husks.

Is this really practical on a large scale? For those of us living in parts of the world where coconuts are limited to the grocery store, it’s hard to imagine. But in more equatorially located countries, coconuts are everywhere.

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Don’t Let Handmade Toys Become Extinct

There has been buzz all around the handmade corners of the internet about the recently approved Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), passed in August of this year in large part because the United States Congress rightly recognized that the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) lacked the authority and staffing to prevent dangerous toys from being imported into the US.

Among other things, the CPSIA bans lead and phthalates in toys, mandates third-party testing and certification for all toys, and requires toy makers to permanently label each toy with a date and batch number.

All of these changes are great for children and will be fairly easy for large, multinational toy manufacturers to comply with.

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High Fructose Corn Syrup: The Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing

I have mentioned several times on this website as well as my own, that my green living journey began with a better nutrition journey. In my mind now, these two go hand in hand. You simply cannot live a green lifestyle and put bad foods into your body. Once you become conscientious about what you do to the environment, you also begin to be conscientious about what goes in your own personal environment – the body. You start to read more about foods, read labels, cook with fresher ingredients and shop smarter. However, just because something is labeled “natural” does not mean chemically it is good for you.

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